ORIGINAL PAPER Amanah and Muslim Identity: Relationships with Religious and Psychological Adjustment in Malaysia Mustafa Tekke 1 • P. J. Watson 2 • Saim Kayadibi 3 • Zhuo Job Chen 4 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Amanah refers to the accountability of Muslims to their community. In Malaysian Muslim university students (N = 209), an Amanah Scale predicted a stronger sense of identity along with more adaptive religious and psychosocial functioning. Multiple regression analyses identified Accountability to Society as especially influential, but Accountability to Allah exhibited at least some problematic implications. Amanah mediated Identity linkages with some measures of religious and psychological adjustment, but also suppressed Identity relationships with greater self-knowledge and lower anxiety. These data confirmed the importance of communal commitments in Muslim mental health, suggested that accountability may have limited liabilities as well as more obvious psychosocial advan- tages, and identified possible complexities in the assessment of Accountability to Allah. Keywords Amanah Á Identity Á Muslim personality adjustment Á Malaysia Á Religious orientations Introduction A focus on Christianity in the psychology of religion has given way to a growing interest in other religious traditions, including Islam (Abu-Riya and Pargament 2011). A greater openness to Islam appears, for example, in formal efforts to describe unique features of Muslim mental health. Smither and Khorsandi (2009) argue, for instance, ‘‘One of the greatest areas of difference between most approaches to personality and Islam is the Islamic belief in the overall beneficence of society and the importance of subordinating one’s personal desires for what is seen as the greater good’’ (p. 92). This Muslim Beneficence of Society Hypothesis (MBSH) contrasts with Western perspectives that often & P. J. Watson paul-watson@utc.edu 1 Department of Psychological Counseling and Guidance, Du ¨zce University, Du ¨zce, Turkey 2 Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, #2803 350 Holt Hall – 615 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, TN 37403, USA 3 Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University, Gombak, Malaysia 4 Department of Psychology, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA 123 Journal of Religion and Health https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-018-0690-3